


night has always pushed up day

by nex_et_nox



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Double Agents, Earth-2, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 19:12:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11191572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nex_et_nox/pseuds/nex_et_nox
Summary: There reached a tipping point, and the city was so afraid.Then, the Flash.There’s something wrong about that man, Cisco knew, with a shivering certainty.Then, Zoom.Reverb was a double agent.





	night has always pushed up day

Cisco woke up screaming.

"Cisco!" Iris shouted. Her eyes were wide as she pinned one of his arms down; Barry was holding down the other, his hair mussed from sleep and lacking his glasses.

Cisco's mouth clicked shut. He lay there, shaking.

"Cisco," Iris said. "What was that?"

Cisco took a few heaving breaths. "The particle accelerator," he said finally. "The one under STAR Labs. It's leaking."

"Jesus," Barry breathed out. He understood. Iris didn't, not fully, but she knew enough from the both of them that her face set in a hard frown. "How did you find out?"

_I dreamed it._

_I dreamed of all those people who were affected by it._

_I dreamed, and because I dreamed, I know that I was affected, too._

"I have a contact," he lied. "I didn't tell you. I'm sorry."

_I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Forgive me._

_Please don't hate me._

* * *

Over the next few weeks, news of humans with remarkable powers – metahumans, they were quickly dubbed – made its way through the city. At first, no one believed it. It was too absurd.

But there reached a tipping point, and the city was so _afraid_.

Then, the Flash.

_There’s something wrong about that man,_ Cisco knew, with a shivering certainty.

* * *

Then, Zoom.

* * *

Cisco dreamed.

_I always said you were terribly clever, Cisco,_ someone said.

Cisco spun on his heel. Out of the wavering darkness stepped a man. He was pieced together like broken pottery, and his face kept shifting. One moment a dark-haired man, a face that looked eerily similar to Harrison Wells; the next, a blond one, nobody that Cisco knew.

The same dead eyes were set in both faces. The same sickly smile.

“Who are you?” Cisco asked.

_An echo_ , said the man. His mouth lagged behind his words.

“Who of?”

_Someone you likely won’t ever meet._ Thwarted rage flashed in the man’s eyes. _Thanks to Mr. Allen._

“Barry?” Cisco blurted, and wanted to clap his hand over his mouth as soon as he said the words.

_So you do know him,_ the man said, pleased. Cisco hated the feeling he had given this shade something that he wanted.

Cisco jerked himself awake.

_You can see through the vibrations of the universe,_ lingered in his ears, words that weren’t meant for him, but for someone else.

Some…other him.

* * *

“I lied to you,” Cisco said from the kitchen table.

Iris set her purse down. Barry shut the front door behind them. They walked over and sat down at the table.

“I don’t have a contact at STAR Labs,” Cisco said. “But the leaks from the particle accelerator – they’re what’s creating the metahumans.”

“We figured,” Barry said.

“Why are you telling us this now?” Iris asked.

Cisco looked down at his hands. “I’m putting you in danger,” he said.

“More danger than we’re already in working for CCPD?”

“Yes,” Cisco said. He fiddled with the empty coffee mug set in front of it, spun it around a few times. Drew his hand back, flexed it, and—

The mug shattered into pieces.

“My dreams – my nightmares – they aren’t just dreams, either,” Cisco said in the aching silence. “Zoom’s building an army. Dr. Wells, at STAR Labs – he’s building metahuman detection devices, which will only drive more people to Zoom.”

“What about the Flash?” Barry asked, hushed.

Cisco bit his lip, shook his head. “There’s something wrong about him,” he said.

“He’s the _Flash_ ,” Iris said.

“I can’t explain it,” Cisco said. “He’s not _right_. Please, trust me on this.”

“Of course,” Barry said, reaching out to cover Cisco’s hand with his own. Iris’ hand followed only half a heartbeat later.

“You’re still our Cisco,” Iris said. “You don’t have to leave. This doesn’t change you. We won’t let it.”

* * *

They didn’t have a choice.

* * *

“It has to look good,” Cisco said miserably. “If I get him to trust me – Iris, some of the things he’s done, some of the things he makes his followers do, even the police don’t know.”

“Which makes you a _witness_ ,” Iris said, still trying to convince him not to go through with this.

“Oh, right, because they’ll believe me,” Cisco laughed, bitter. “Excuse me, officers, I’d like to report a crime. Several crimes, actually. Yes, well, I saw them in a vision, because I’m a _metahuman_.”

“I would protect you,” Iris whispered.

“Maybe from them,” Cisco said, suddenly so tired. “Maybe. But not from Zoom. And he would kill anyone who got in his way. I won’t let that happen.”

“I hate this.”

“Bury the files, Iris,” Cisco said. “Don’t let anyone find them. I’ll send you reports when I can.” He caught her hands in his own. “I can save lives like this. I have to do this.”

“Promise me you’ll save your own life, too,” Iris said, tears gathering in her eyes.

_You know what Zoom will do if you don’t obey him!_ a woman screamed. Murky edges of a vision far in the future, one that he only held a few pieces of. His powers were growing stronger all the time, enough to let him see parts of something so far in the future.

Enough to let him feel the searing, crushing pain ripping his heart apart.

“I’ll try,” he said.

She pulled him in for one last desperate kiss. “Say goodbye to Barry, too,” she whispered, drawing back a hair’s breadth. “Don’t just disappear on him.”

_Don’t disappear on us_ , she really meant. _Don’t die doing this. Don’t die._

“I will,” Cisco said, and this time he meant it.

* * *

_You have a soft heart,_ said the echo-man with dead eyes. He was blond right now, wearing a yellow suit, and Cisco swore he can see red lightning arcing behind him. _Zoom won’t ever believe you._

“I’ll make him,” Cisco said defiantly.

_He will kill you first._

Cisco’s breath caught in his throat. He knew the shade was telling the truth.

_He is a petulant child,_ said the shade, almost disinterested. _I was always so much better than him. I made everything count. I almost got away with it._ He laughed.

_Monster_ , some part of Cisco thought, and even though he didn’t say it aloud, it echoed around them. Everything echoed in this place. Endless reverberations.

The man’s face closed off. _You can be cruel when you want to be,_ he said. _But only to those who love you._

“I don’t know you,” Cisco said, taking a step away.

_No,_ said the man. _But you remind me of my son._ His face warped, wheeling back to the man who both was and was not Harrison Wells. _I can teach you. Zoom will believe you, then._

_You have shown me what it’s like to have a son_ , whispered through the dark; a vision of the past, not what the man in front of him had currently said.

Lightning flickered behind him.

“Who are you?” Cisco asked.

The man smiled. _I’m the Reverse Flash._

* * *

_You_ , Cisco – no, Reverb, he was Reverb now, he had to bury Cisco far away with everything else good he had left behind – thought, months later, peering into another Earth through a vision. The other Cisco doubled over in pain, clutching at his temples. _You’re the one he was talking about._

“What’s happening to me?” he breathed.

_Your powers are waking up,_ Reverb thought.

He wished he could help this other Cisco. He wished he could shout through the void the answers to all his questions, the ways that his powers could be used.

Maybe this Cisco could be something better than him.

God, he hoped so.

The other Barry Allen skidded into the room, flickers of gold lightning sparking off him, and Reverb’s heart squeezed in a vice.

He tore the goggles off his face, turned away to report to Zoom.

_I want to go home,_ he thought, in one moment of weakness, and then he squashed the thought mercilessly.

* * *

_You_ , he thought again, months after those first visions of the other Cisco. Vibe.

Vibe would survive this. He had to.

Reverb might not.

He didn’t know if he could do this. Oh, god, he didn’t know if he could do this. Everything he had practiced might be for nothing, because he didn’t know if this would work.

_Iris, Barry, I love you, I love you._

“They work for me,” Reverb announced, stepping out of the light. He was grateful for the goggles covering his face; they disguised the way his eyes darted, desperate, to Iris. Barry wasn’t with her, and Reverb was so thankful.

_I love you, I love you, I love you both so much—_

He just had to fake it for a little while longer.

_The Reverse Flash says hello_ , he felt the absurd urge to say to Vibe. He didn’t know what made him want to do this one thing for the man.

(The man who had taught him everything he needed to know to fake his way into Zoom’s good graces, the man who had taught him how to be ruthless and bury everything that would give him away, the man who was a shade himself, but still never regarded Reverb as anything other than a pale copy of the Cisco _he_ had known.

Maybe Reverb knew after all, then.)

It didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter if he survived this. Not really.

Iris knew everything he did. Beyond the reports he’d been sending her for over a year now, encrypted six ways to Sunday and then dropped into her hand with an untraceable dimensional rift he opened, Reverb had also found out everything he could about Zoom’s future plans. He had barely slept, barely even taken the goggles off, always searching for the greater depth of Zoom’s plans.

If he didn’t make it, he had to protect those he was leaving behind.

And that information, the extra drive of information he had dropped at home earlier this evening, sitting on what used to be a bed for the _three_ of them instead of just two—

It would protect them. All they had to do was use it.

The Flash – the other Barry – skidded onto the scene, and Reverb hardened his heart and played his part.

* * *

“You know what Zoom will do if you don’t obey him!” Killer Frost screamed, a line he had heard countless times.

This was it.

Reverb turned his face away, just enough that Iris could see him.

_I love you, I love Barry_ , he mouthed.

She shook her head silently.

Reverb turned away from her and faced his death head on.

* * *

(Iris lost her father and Cisco in the span of a bare few days, and the man she had spent those days with, the man who she _thought_ , for however brief a time, was her husband, was instead an imposter from another Earth.

She had figured it out, of course, because Reverb kept them updated on Zoom and what havoc he was wrecking on this Earth and the other. She had known for sure when the imposter had brought Cisco – his Cisco, not hers – to the police station.

Now, she couldn’t face that Cisco. She couldn’t bear to see the face of the man she had lost.

“Barry,” she sobbed, when they finally brought her husband back to her.

“Iris, hey, did these – these people do something to you?” He pulled her into a hug.

“Zoom killed Cisco,” she said, the tears she hadn’t let herself shed at the warehouse (the _crime scene_ ) finally fell.

“No,” Barry said, and she could feel him shaking his head in denial. “No, no, he can’t be dead. He promised he’d come home.”

“He lied,” Iris whispered, finally accepting that awful truth.

Barry’s breath hitched deep in his chest—

“I never actually promised,” said an exhausted voice against the familiar strange noise of an opening breach, and simultaneous yells of alarm came from behind Iris and Barry. Iris pulled herself from her husband’s arms and jerked around.

Reverb stumbled through the breach, barely making it through before he was collapsing to his knees.

“Hi, sweethearts,” he said, grinning tiredly up at them. “I’m home.”)

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be for FlashVibeWeek 2017 (Day 1: Earth-2 AU), but it ended up being Barriscowest and focusing pretty heavily on Iris and Cisco's relationship, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> really you can take it or leave it as being part of FlashVibeWeek
> 
> possibly hilariously out of character, but this was super fun to write


End file.
